Sarah Sponcil and Terese Cannon’s time has come as AVP champions

HERMOSA BEACH, Calif. — It was inevitable: Sarah Sponcil was going to win an AVP tournament.

Everybody knew it, from the moment they saw a blue-eyed, implacable 22-year-old Sponcil make the finals of the first “real” AVP she had ever played, in Austin of 2018, when her only loss came in the finals at the hands of a new partnership in April Ross and Alix Klineman.

Some, take John Mayer, then her coach at Loyola Marymount, now simply an enormous fan, like so many in the United States, knew earlier than that: Sarah Sponcil was a generational talent, the type of athlete whom young girls would put up posters on their wall and giggle when requesting autographs one day. Over the next three years, Mayer proved, per usual, prophetic in his praise of Sponcil. She’d go on to win back-to-back FIVB events, in Russia and the Czech Republic. She’d qualify for the Olympic Games. She’d finish the 2019 AVP season making every semifinal. Her name was firmly in the mix when it came to discussions of the best defenders in the world, alongside Duda, April Ross, Laura Ludwig, Heather Bansley, Mariafe Artacho, Barbara Seixas.

Yes, Sarah Sponcil belonged.

Yet one thing was missing: The AVP title so many viewed as inevitable, a simple matter of time.

“There’s always that thing in the back of your head: ‘You’re the Olympian who hasn’t won an AVP title,’” Sponcil said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “I was no longer wanting to be that person. That was one of the motivations. But there was something that came over me. Every other final I’ve been in, there was something about who I was as a player, I wasn’t ready to win. Going into that Sunday, the final match, I was ready, now is the time. That was really special and I was so stoked to get another chance.”

What changed on “that Sunday,” July 10, the finals of AVP Hermosa Beach, is impossible to pin down, as intangible as it is tangible. Both everything and nothing shifted for Sponcil. She is still the sensational defender she has been ever since Lauren Fendrick pulled her into the main draw of Austin in May of 2018. She’s still the gritty competitor who won multiple NCAA Championships at UCLA, helping to resurrect the program and turn it into a dynasty. She’s still the goofy kid who made music videos with her former partner, Kelly Cheng, and, in between sets of the…